If π is a brain process in your brain, and also a brain process in my brain, then it is two different things.

But if that were so, when I talk about π I am talking about a quite different thing to you, when you talk about π.

This is a cut-down version of the private language argument. π is not private thin in each of our heads, but a public thing that is used openly to make calculations and settle disagreements. — Banno

Pi is like any other word. It is communicated in partially shared circumstances. This circumstance includes your brain processes and my brains processes , along with their embodiment in each of our organisms and the embeddedness of our brains and bodies in a partially shared social environment. None of these aspects
can be neatly disentangled from the others, but the fact that the meaning of pi is only partially shared between us explains why its use by either of us can always be contested by the other.

EDIT: According to Google Translate, "Remanens capax mutationem" means "remaining capable of change" in English, and "Siendo capaz de cambiar", in Spanish. That doesn't make any conceptual sense to me, so I doubt that it many sense for anyone other than Heidegger himself. — Arcane Sandwich

I assume he means , that which truly is is that which remains self-identical in its substantive qualities as it undergoes quantitative change in spatial or temporal location. I’m with Heidegger here. I don’t believe there is anything in the world which retains its exact qualitative identity over time. It just appears to us as if this is the case because things can remain SIMILAR to themselves over time, and that’s why we invented number (same thing, different time).

But that's my point: there are aspects of the world which are not mathematizable. They're called objects, in the literal sense of the term. They are "out there", outside of our brains, they are what Descartes called res extensa. — Arcane Sandwich

Res extensa forces onto objects the concept of persisting identity, which is also the basis of enumeration.

Heidegger explains:

“Thus what can be shown to have the character of constantly remaining, as remanens capax mutationem, constitutes the true being of beings which can be experienced in the world. What enduringly remains truly is. This is the sort of thing that mathematics knows. What mathematics makes accessible in beings constitutes their being.”

Heidegger argues that the fundamentally undiscussed ontological foundations of empirical science since Descartes are based on his formulation of objective presence. Just like number, the notion of pure self-persistence is a fiction applied to the world.

“Thus the being of the "world" is, so to speak, dictated to it in terms of a definite idea of being which is embedded in the concept of substantiality and in terms of an idea of knowledge which cognizes beings in this way. Descartes does not allow the kind of being of innerworldly beings to present itself, but rather prescribes to the world, so to speak, its "true" being on the basis of an idea of being (being = constant objective presence) the source of which has not been revealed and the justification of which has not been demonstrated.

Thus it is not primarily his dependence upon a science, mathematics, which just happens to be especially esteemed, that determines his ontology of the world, rather his ontology is determined by a basic ontological orientation toward being as constant objective presence, which mathematical knowledge is exceptionally well suited to grasp.”

Well I mean, if you want to get technical about it, it has a lot of math to it, but it's ultimately within the domain of what physicists study. To them, math and logic are just tools, they have no ontology. Physics is the academic discipline that deals with the ontology of the world, not math — Arcane Sandwich

I think math is more than a tool for physics. Physics deals only with those aspects of the world which are mathemetizable. The objects of physics are based on geometric idealizations such as space and time. These are presuppositions imposed on the world by physics rather than emanating from the ontology of the world. Forgetting the role such presuppositions play leads to such confusions as Wigner’s famous paper on the ‘unreasonable effectiveness’ of mathematics in the natural sciences.

But I claim that it's the property of having physical spatiotemporality, not the mereological property of being a part of the largest whole. — Arcane Sandwich

I like what you, and Bunge, have to say about numbers being fictions created by the brain (idealizations a might be a better word than fictions). But how can we assign a reality to the universe independent of such brain processes consisting of spatiotemporal localizability? Isnt the notion of spatiotemporal localization based on a mathematical
abstraction?

Gays have been subjected to instances of bullying, beatings, and murder, true enough. In my experience, gays managed to get along in a frequently unfriendly society by keeping a low profile when necessary. I'm not sure how much protection was gained by being a tightly knit community. Whatever tight-knit community existed was more the result of seeking sex, partners and love. Informal institutions -- cruising, bathhouses, bars, adult bookstores, and so forth were the core of at least the gay male community. Later, by the mid 1970s, social institutions became more prominent -- religious, social, or sport groups. Without the cell phone and internet, physical proximity was essential — BC

If you haven’t spent much time in the few truly large gay communities in the U.S., you may not appreciate how important they were to gay people of a certain era. The gay community I am most familiar with is Chicago’s Boystown, which I frequented beginning in the ‘80’s. The kind of protection that it offered many who lived there was multi-faceted. Some young men had been excommunicated from their families and considered the gay bars as a substitute family. It was where they celebrated birthdays and holidays, found a shoulder to cry on, emotional and sometimes financial support.
Gay teens who found themselves homeless after being kicked out by their families would get a room at the gay bathhouse, sleep at the gay theater, the gay YMCA or transient hotel.

For others it was the only place they felt (relatively) safe holding hands and showing open displays of affection with other men. Some had been so traumatized by experiences of rejection from the larger community that they turned the neighborhood into an all-purpose gay ‘ghetto’, socializing exclusively with gay men, getting services only from gay doctors, dentists, psychologists, mechanics, real estate professionals, playing sports only within gay sports leagues, working out only at gay gyms and heath clubs, getting their news from local gay newspapers (Gay Chicago, Windy City Times). When AIDS came on the scene, at first it was only in places like Boystown or Castro that one could get new, affordable treatments and supportive emotional care.

It can be difficult to quantify magic by its very nature. However, if the adage “magic is science we don’t understand yet” is true, then the reverse may also be true: that science is magic that we do understand. If so, then magic is, in a way, real if only in that there are lots of things we collectively and individually do not understand but that still have tangible effects on reality and our lives. It is also possible to use technology you do not understand, so it may be possible to use “magic” you do not understand. — MrLiminal

It’s easy to get hung up trying to figure how to make categorical separations between religion and science , and between magic and understanding. But the central issue I discern in the OP has to do with the consequences of HOW we understand something.

For instance, Wayfarer quotes Feynman saying:

I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.
— Richard Feynman, Nobel Laureate in Physics — Wayfarer

and then adds:

“And yet, these devices we’re using to read and write these ideas depend on it!”


What does Feynman mean by physicists ‘not understanding’ quantum mechanics? It is easy to read this as pointing to a peripheral sort of mystery that doesn’t have any impact on the achievements of physics. But I would argue that this ‘not understanding’ affects the very core of what physicists say they do understand very well. That is to say, it is not enough to claim that a science produces devices that work. We have to notice HOW they work, and remind ourselves that they can always be made to work differently. In other words , it could be that if a new approach within physics addresses and resolves the lack of understanding Feynman is referring to, it will result in devices that not only work differently than current ones, but work better. What does this have to do with religion and magic? I agree with you that in an important sense, science and religion are talking about the same thing.

They are both utilizing a framework of intelligibility to try to make sense of the world. When magic is invoked as part of an explanation, it also belongs to a framework of intelligibility. It is not as though the subject matter that magic is attributed to lacks all sensible structure, it’s just that the parts connect in only a loose , murky and partially arbitrary manner. Magic is the fiat of a mysterious black box. We find the use of black boxes not only in religion (God is the biggest of them all) but in the various sciences ( their unquestioned metaphysical presuppositions) . What would it mean to move away from a reliance on magic and black boxes, and is it even possible? I think it is, but such thinking is best done in a philosophicalmode which reveals the processes leading to the generation of the metaphysical presuppositions on which sciences and religions depend.

If the butterflies-in-themselves are never seen, then he's probably right, and we can't say in which direction they fly. But we don't seem to need butterflies-in-themselves to have a simple chat about the direction in which butterflies fly.

That is, Husserl appears to be talking shite. — Banno

Just read the man instead of working yourself up into a tizzy. Do you honestly think he’s stupid enough to claim that we can’t do what we obviously know we can? He’s not trying to take away from us a single scientific achievement, consensual fact or logical inference. He’s simply showing us how we manage these feats from a more fundament vantage than the how’s that the sciences take as their starting point.

In a debate with Richard Rorty, Umberto Eco tried to press the point that things cannot be pragmatism and convention "all the way down." A screwdriver, in some sense, shapes what we choose to do with it. Rorty disagreed and gave the unfortunate counter example that we could just as well scratch our ear with a screwdriver. Except we wouldn't, because of what a screwdriver is and what we are (or, if the point isn't clear enough, consider a razor sharp hunting knife). The world, and truth, imposes itself on how we deal with things — Count Timothy von Icarus

What we are using a thing for shapes how we perceive the constraints and affordances offered by that thing. If we understand what a computer is for , then we perceive the properties of that computer and how those properties shape what we can do with it in terms of speed, memory, screen brightness, quality of manufacturing, etc. If we have never heard of a computer, and find one on the side of the road, we will not consider the tower, screen, mouse and printer as even belonging to the same thing. We may then use the tower as a doorstop, and then it’s properties will appear to us in terms of its weight, ability to grip the surface it’s placed on, and other considerations relevant to effective doorstops.

A series of connected lines and curves made out of sticks doesn’t shape what we do with the this ‘object’ all by itself. What we do with it may involve interpreting it as a string of letters that form a meaningful sentence, if we read that language. Or if we don’t recognize that language, the stick objects may appear as random collection of shapes. In either case, what the object is and how it shapes us is a function of the role it plays for us a system of meaningful references tied to useful purposes. In order to decide that a screwdriver drives screws better than it scratches ears, we have to already know about not only the role of a screwdriver , but that of screws and the surfaces that screws fit together, the role of these fitted surfaces in a construction project, the role of the construction project in relation to a finished building or machine, the role of that building or machine in our activities, and so on. What makes the screwdriver a screwdriver for us is not inherent in the object all by itself but in this totality of chains of ‘in order to’s’ that belongs to and on the base of which it was invented.

Do the world, and truth, impose themselves on how we deal with things? Yes, but only in and through how we deal with things.

As mainstream stereotypes become narrower, so do the alternative categories that arise to challenge them. LGBTQIA+ identities, for instance, have expanded to include more and more letters, each reflecting a specific experience or distinction. But why must a bisexual man need a separate category? Why must we continually subdivide? This hyper-fragmentation suggests not a celebration of diversity but an inability to communicate across divides or truly respect individuality.

At its core, this fragmentation doesn’t erase the fundamental human need for belonging—it amplifies it. In response, we see the rise of tight-knit communities: gay enclaves, the “incel” movement, the manosphere, the femosphere, and so on. — Benkei

You don’t think one important reason for the rise of categories of gender identity is that individuals found themselves rejected and ostracized over their behavior, which in many cases they had no control over? A feminine-acting gay male could be the target of bullies, and their partnership with another male not legally recognized. A tight-knit gay community was necessary as long as gays felt unsafe in mainstream society. Now that mainstream attitudes have changed these ‘gay ghettos’ are fading as their residents integrate back into the wider community, while maintaining their gay identity. And with further liberalization in attitudes toward non-conforming gender behaviors among the general population, the relevance of the concept of gay identity will likely diminish. Thus we can see how the creation of identitarian communities can serve a vital, if temporary purpose.

Husserl can't see the butterflies? — Banno

What he sees is similar but not identical to what every other observer of the ‘same’ butterflies see.

“If one attends to the distinction between things as "originally one's own" and as "empathized" from others, in respect to the how of the manners of appearance, and if one attends to the possibility of discrepancies between one's own and empathized views, then what one actually experiences originaliter as a perceptual thing is transformed, for each of us, into a mere "representation of" ["Vorstellung von"], "appearance of/' the one objectively existing thing. From the synthesis these have taken on precisely the new sense "appearance of," and as such they are henceforth valid. 'The" thing itself is actually that which no one experiences as really seen, since it is always in motion, always, and for everyone, a unity for consciousness of the openly endless multiplicity of changing experiences and experienced things, one's own and those of others.” (Crisis Of European Sciences)

We can apply the Principle of Charity to reach agreement on all these observations.

And this speaks to the communality of language, that what we say about how things are is part and parcel of our role as members of a community. This in firm opposition to the view that some individuals observations are somehow paramount, or must form the foundation of knowledge. Knowledge is not built from solipsism.

This is in contrast to Wayfarer's thesis that science neglects lived experience. A better way to think of this is that science combines multiple lived experiences in order to achieve agreement and verity. So sure, "our entire perceptual and cognitive apparatus biases our understanding of the world", and yet we can work to minimise that bias by paying attention to contexts and wording our utterances with care, so that they work in the widest available context. Not the view form nowhere but the view from anywhere — Banno

This is, up to a point, compatible with Husserl’s phenomenological analysis of the construction of empirically objective facts via the coordination of subjective perspectives among an intersubjective community. But when Husserl points out that the intersubjectively produced empirical objects are entities that no one actually sees, he doesn’t find it necessary to anchor this objectivity in a principle of charity that assumes a transcendence of perceptual bias via a grip on ‘the way things really are’.

Part of the problem here is perhaps that both analytic and continental philosophy of science has become so divorced from how scientists tend to think of their work that it has become largely irrelevant to scientific practices. The extreme skepticism and general anti-realism one finds in a lot of philosophy of science seems contained largely to the philosophers — Count Timothy von Icarus

Scientists aren’t paid to think about their work, they’re paid to produce results. That’s why we need philosophers of science. When scientists do engage in metaphysical speculation, it rarely reaches the level of sophistication of someone like a Heisenberg or Bohm, which is why it may seem to many scientists that philosophy of science today is ‘divorced from how they think of their work’. But there is an important difference between a philosophical perspective being irrelevant to scientific practices and that perspective being treated as irrelevant by those who don’t have deep enough insight not the nature of their own practices. It wasnt that long ago that scientists were oblivious to concepts like Popperian falsificationism and paradigm shifts, which are now ingrained within the way many of they think about their practices.

I don't read the Blue Book or PI as saying there is no use for reduction in all cases. The objects of shared experience do not have the same problems as what is experienced by us as persons. The discussion of mental states thrusts us into an unknown. To say that nothing more can be learned would be a kind of nominalism… That "sometime perhaps we'll know more about them" militates against imagining ourselves at the end of explanations — Paine

I find that many people are inclined to assume that neurophysiology and cognitive psychology between them will supply the deficit - a computer model of the mind. (The latest developments in science/technology imported wholesale into philosophy.) So the traditional language morphs somewhat, but survives. — Ludwig V

I think it’s a different story when it comes to neurophenomenology and enactive embodied cognitive science. Like Witt, these approaches reject the idea of inner, computational processes in the head in favor of practices of interaction immersed in the world.

The theme, one that may be becoming prevalent, is that post modernism has noticed that not just any narrative will do. Global warming does not care what narrative you adopt, and relativism works for oligarchs as well as anarchists. The truth doesn't care what you believe. That's for Joshs. — Banno

Given your emphasis on language as use, I want to point out the implication of truth not caring about what one believes, desires, feels or cares about. That is , a notion of truth as pristinely separate from issues of affect, value, power and purpose, as though those factors were at best peripheral to, and at worst repressive of attainment of truth. Pragmatism and hermeneutics, which treat truth as a function of discursive practices, know better than that.

So . . . can this process take place with any physical series? Would Husserl countenance using an apple, say, as the starting part or element? Does it matter where we start? I think the answer is, "Sure, anything at all will do, as long as its perception counts as a 'sense act'," but I want to get your take on it. — J

We have already indicated the concreta on which the abstracting activity is based. They are totalities of determinate objects. We now add: "completely arbitrary" objects. For the formation of concrete totalities there actually are no restrictions at all with respect to the particular contents to be embraced. Any imaginable object, whether physical or psychical, abstract or concrete, whether given through sensation or phantasy, can be united with any and arbitrarily many others to form a totality, and accordingly can also be counted. For example, certain trees, the Sun, the Moon, Earth and Mars; or a feeling, an angel, the Moon, and Italy, etc. In these examples we can always speak of a totality, a multiplicity, and of a determinate number. The nature of the particular contents therefore makes no difference at all. This fact, as rudimentary as it is incontestable, already rules out a certain class of views concerning the origination of the number concepts: namely, the ones which restrict those concepts to special content domains, e.g., that of physical contents.
(Philosophy of Arithmetic)

Is Rouse's point that (i) there are no rules (or social regularities or norms within a practice), or that (ii) nothing compels us to follow them?

The assertion that there are no rules or norms within a practice seems obviously false. It is easy to observe that many people do follow the rules more often than not - in driving, chess, sports, language, and much more. Many people have followed the same rules of classical chess for more than a day, at least. Also, any social practice involves norms, so it is redundant to refer to the norms within it. It would not be possible to learn how to play chess unless there was an everyday practice of playing it. The everyday practice is the rule, the custom, the correct application to future instances.

If we assume that there are such rules, then perhaps Rouse is right that there is nothing that compels people to follow them. But so what? People do follow rules. Clearly, you can drive through a red light or move your rook diagonally or say a meaningless string of random words if you so choose, but then you are no longer playing the same game as everyone else; no longer following the custom; no longer following the rule. Nothing forces you to play chess but you aren't playing chess (correctly) unless you follow the established rules/customs/practice of playing chess. — Luke

As Antony pointed out , issues concerning the normativity and correctness of rule following are outside the scope of the reading, but let me just offer that the grammatical distinction Wittgenstein makes between causes and reasons, or causes and motivation, is relevant here in the way it points to his later analysis of the situation when I exhaust my reasons and simply declare that my spade is turned. In this book, he says “When the chain of reasons has come to an end and still the question "why?" is asked, one is inclined to give a cause instead of a reason.” He calls the grammar of causal explanation a kind of hypothesis or conjecture rather than knowing. By the time of P.I., he seems to treat conjecturing of cause in terms of the bedrock of a language game. “ If I have exhausted the justifications I have reached bedrock, and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: "This is simply what I do."
We may then try to come up with a causal explanation.
With regard to Roise on rule following, as Wittgenstein say, a rule, when followed, is never followed “ at a distance”, but when its symbols can be directly used as a guide. And even here, Rkise’s larger point is that rules and social norms underdetermine how we actually follow them.

↪Joshs
In a way, the number 5 implies all other numbers, because its meaning is rooted in its place in a sequence. And everything is like that — frank

Yes indeed.

The question was much more ordinary: What are the concrete contents or data of which Husserl speaks, that allow us to form our idealization of numbers? Can you give an example of how this might work? — J

Here’s my long-winded attempt at a Husserlian explanation of the subjective constitution of number:

In Philosophy of Arithmetic(1891), Husserl described a method for understanding the constitution of a multiplicity or plurality composed of independent parts, which he dubbed ‘collective combination'. According to Husserl, the basis of any sort of whole of independently apprehended parts(a whole in the pregnant sense) is the collective combination, which is an abstracting act of consciousness uniting parts.

“Collective combination plays a highly significant role in our mental life as a whole. Every complex phenomenon which presupposes parts that are separately and specifically noticed, every higher mental and emotional activity, requires, in order to be able to arise at all, collective combinations of partial phenomena. There could never even be a representation of one of the more simple relations (e.g., identity, similarity, etc.) if a unitary interest and, simultaneously with it, an act of noticing did not pick out the terms of the relation and hold them together as unified. This 'psychical' relation is, thus, an indispensable psychological precondition of every relation and combination whatsoever.”

In any such whole the parts are united in a specific manner. Fundamental to the genesis of almost all totalities is that its parts initially appear as a temporal succession.

“Succession in time constitutes an insuppressible psychological precondition for the formation of by far the most number concepts and concrete multiplicities - and practically all of the more complicated concepts in general.”“Almost all representations of multiplicities - and, in any case, all representations of numbers - are results of processes, are wholes originated gradually out of their elements. Insofar as this is so, each element bears in itself a different temporal determination.””Temporal succession forms the only common element in all cases of multiplicity, which therefore must constitute the foundation for the abstraction of that concept.”

The first step of constitution of a multiplicity is the awareness of the temporal succession of parts, each of which we are made aware of as elements “separately and specifically noticed”. In the case of numbers, one must abstract away everything else about those elements (color, size, texture) other than that they have been individually noticed as an empty ‘unit’. The concept of number is only possible once we invent the idea of identical sameness over time ( same thing, different time). This concept is not derived from the concrete data of experience (i.e. real apples as their appearance is given to us via continually changing perspectives). Rather, it is a concept we impose upon a world in continual flux. It was necessary to invent the concept of identity, and its pure repetition, in order to have the notion of the numeric unit.

The collective combination itself only emerges from a secondary act of consciousness. This higher order constituting sense changes what was originally a temporal succession into a simultaneity by ‘bringing' back ‘ the previous parts via reflecting on them in memory. Husserl says that a combination of objects is similar to the continuity of a tone. In both cases, a temporal succession is perceived through reflection as a simultaneity.

“For the apprehension of each one of the colligated contents there is required a distinct psychical act. Grasping them together then requires a new act, which obviously includes those distinct acts, and thus forms a psychical act of second order.” “It is essential that the partial representations united in the representation of the multiplicity or number be present in our consciousness simultaneously [in an act of reflection].”

The constitution of an abstract multiplicity is analogous to the creation of any whole, even though the former involves a peculiarly external form of unification in comparison to combinations unified by similarity or continuity.

A key feature of the fact that a totality is a product of a temporally unfolding series of sense acts is that prior elements of the originally apprehended series have already changed by the time we move on to the succeeding elements of that series. “In forming the representation of the totality we do not attend to the fact that changes in the contents occur as the colligation progresses.” The secondary sense-forming act of the uniting of the pasts into the whole is not, then, ‘faithful' to the original meaning of the parts it colligates, in that they have already changed their original sense via the passage of time at the point where we perform the uniting act of multiplicity. Rather than a being faithful, the sense of the unification act may better be described as a moving beyond the original sense-constituting acts forming the apprehension of the parts. In forming a new dimension of sense from retentional and protentional consciousness, the unifying act of totalization idealizes the parts that it unifies. In addition to the abstractive concept of groupness (collective combination), many kinds of more intimate idealizations are constituted as wholes out of original temporal successions. We can see this clearly in the case of the real object, an ideal totality formed out of a continuous synthetic flow of adumbrations in which what is actually experienced in the present is not the ‘faithful', that is, actual presencing of temporally simultaneous elements but a simultaneity of retentional series, present sense and protentional anticipations.

So the question I'm posing is whether the "concrete data" are pre-theoretical, which Wang thinks is not possible. Personally, I think it is possible, but I'm wondering how you think Husserl understood this in relation to numbers — J

I believe Husserl argues that all perception is conceptually driven. What appears as concrete data of experience are themselves given relative to modes of givenness constituted by a subject.

“Certainly the world that is in being for me, the world about which I have always had ideas and spoken about meaningfully, has meaning and is accepted as valid by me because of my own apperceptive performances because of these experiences that run their course and are combined precisely in those performances—as well as other functions of consciousness, such as thinking. But is it not a piece of foolishness to suppose that world has being because of some performance of mine? Clearly, I must make my formulation more precise. In my Ego there is formed, from out of the proper sources of transcendental passivity and activity, my “representation of the world, ” my “picture of the world, ” whereas outside of me, naturally enough, there is the world itself. But is this really a good way of putting it? Does this talk about outer and inner, if it makes any sense at all, receive its meaning from anywhere else than from my formation and my preservation of meaning? Should I forget that the totality of everything that I can ever think of as in being resides within the universal realm of consciousness, within my realm, that of the Ego, and indeed within what is for me real or possible?” (Phenomenology and Anthropology)

The question now is whether a thing, which indeed remains one thing under all circumstances, is the identical something of properties and is actually in itself solid and fixed with respect to its real properties; that is, is a thing an identity, an identical subject of identical properties, the changing element being only its states and circumstances? Would this not then mean that according to the various circumstances into which it can be brought, or into which it can be thought to be introduced, the thing has different actual states, but that in advance-a priori - how it can behave, and, further, how it will behave, is predelineated by its own essence?

But does each thing (or, what is equivalent here: does any thing at all) have such an essence of its own in the first place? Or is the thing, as it were, always underway, not at all graspable therefore in pure Objectivity, but rather, in virtue of its relation to subjectivity, in principle only a relatively identical something, which does not have its essence in advance or graspable once and for all, but instead has an open essence, one that can always take on new properties according to the constitutive circumstances of givenness? But this is precisely the problem, to determine more exactly the sense of this openness, as regards, specifically, the "Objectivity" of natural science.”(Husserl, Ideas II)

We can maintain that mathematical objects are mind-independent, self-subsistent and in every sense real, and we can also explain how we are cognitively related to them: they are invariants in our experience, given fulfillments of mathematical intentions. The evidence that justifies our mathematical knowledge is of the same kind as the evidence available for empirical knowledge claims: we are given these objects. And, since they are given, not subjectively constructed, fictionalism, conventionalism, and similar compromise views turn out to be unnecessarily permissive. The only twist we add to a Platonic realism is that ideal objects are transcendentally constituted.

We can evidently say, for example, that mathematical objects are mind-independent and unchanging, but now we always add that they are constituted in consciousness in this manner, or that they are constituted by consciousness as having this sense … . They are constituted in consciousness, nonarbitrarily, in such a way that it is unnecessary to their existence that there be expressions for them or that there ever be awareness of them. (p. 13).

Mathemarical concepts for Husserl are no more ‘real’ than the spatial objects we interact with in the world. That is to say, their reality is the result of an abstractive idealization on the part of the subject, drawing from encounters with concrete data but imposing on those contents an idealized form. Derrida explains:

Numbers are mental creations insofar as they form the results of activities exercised upon concrete contents; what these activities create, however, are not new and absolute contents which we could find again in space or in the 'external world'; rather are they unique relation-concepts which can only be produced again and again and which are in no way capable of being found somewhere ready-made." This remarkable passage, which already designates the production, therefore the primordial historicity, of idealities which no longer will ever belong to the time and space of empirical history, is from Concerning the Concept of Number (1887), which is taken up again as the first chapter of Philosophy of Arithmetic (1891)

The authority with regards to the correct use of language is not any individual, but the norms and accepted customs/rules of language use within a society. — Luke

And what does Wittgenstein tell us about the authority of norms, customs and rules of language when it comes to the actual correct USE of language? As Joseph Rouse interests Wittgenstein:

…we cannot appeal to social regularities or collectively presupposed norms within a practice: there are no such things, I have argued, but more important, if there were they would not thereby legitimately bind us. Any regularities in what practitioners have previously done does not thereby have any authority to bind subsequent performances to the same regularities. The familiar Wittgensteinian paradoxes about rule following similarly block any institution of norms merely by invocation of a rule, since no rule can specify its correct application to future instances (Wittgenstein 1953). Practices should instead be understood as comprising performances that are mutually interactive in partially shared circumstances.

Right. That's along the lines of what I was saying. Although, that's just a gesture at explaining why math helps us predict events. It's when we take individual cases, like Fibonacci numbers, that we find we haven't explained anything. Yet. — frank

There was a famous confrontation between Wittgenstein and Godel that has been interpreted in different ways. The way I see it, Wittgenstein honed in on the idea that something like an incompleteness theorem could be ‘proved’. What is it we are doing when we prove that sort of theorem, or for that matter, any theorem, as ‘true’?One thing that we don’t think we are doing is changing the subject. That is, we think of mathematical proof as a paradigmatic example of rational thought, which allows us to link premises with outcomes in reliable ways. The source of this reliability is the assumed persistence of meaning of the premises. We depend on the working parts of logical calculation retaining their identity over the course of the calculation.

But what we don’t assume is that when working through something like a mathematical or logical proof, we surreptitiously import new assumptions, changing in a very subtle manner the stakes and the sense of our task as we move through its. steps. The production of Fibonacci numbers is one example of what happens when we do different things with numbers, like create rational out of real numbers. All sorts of new surprises ensue. Not because such things are built into number itself, but because we are changing the subject in a subtle way, importing new concepts into our use of numbers. It is what we are constructing and importing that confronts us with unexplainable riddles, because , believing that each new wrinkle belongs to the ‘same’ system as the old, we are trying to derive our new invention from a previous one. This is what we hope to do when we talk about ‘explaining’ Fibonacci numbers.

So you're saying that math can be a community construction without necessarily arising from any activity involving the world. It's that what we call the world conforms to thought a la the Tractatus, so it's no surprise that we find an affinity between our math and the world's shenanigans.

Do you believe that we are also products of analysis? That your individuality arises from reflection on events? — frank

I was thinking of the later Wittgenstein rather than the Tractatus, but yes, math would be a community construction. It’s not that the world isn’t involved, it’s just that the world only reaches us through our constructive interactions with it. We are an intrinsic part of the world, and the Real is the effect of a two-way interaction.

I believe my individual authonomy as a subject is a product of my partially shared interactions with others.

I was thinking about things like the Fibonacci sequence. It shows up in a lot of places that have nothing to do with human consensus. There's something about the structure of math that matches up to the structure of the universe in some ways — frank

And the structure of the universe isnt the product of imaginative construction? Wittgenstein would say you’re being tricked by your own grammar, that is, by hidden suppositions that project themselves onto the ‘real’ world and then seem to arise from that outside.

Why not, indeed? But I think that extended passage brings out the underlying animus against mathematical Platonism, which is mainly that it undermines empiricism. And empiricism is deeply entrenched in our worldview.

Mathematical platonism has considerable philosophical significance. If the view is true, it will put great pressure on the physicalist idea that reality is exhausted by the physical. For platonism entails that reality extends far beyond the physical world and includes objects that aren’t part of the causal and spatiotemporal order studied by the physical sciences.[1] Mathematical platonism, if true, will also put great pressure on many naturalistic theories of knowledge. For there is little doubt that we possess mathematical knowledge. The truth of mathematical platonism would therefore establish that we have knowledge of abstract (and thus causally inefficacious) objects. This would be an important discovery, which many naturalistic theories of knowledge would struggle to accommodate.
— SEP, Platonism in the Philosophy of Mathematics — Wayfarer

If Platonism seems to ‘undercut’ empiricism, it does so only by occupying the opposing pole of the binary implicating both physicalism and platonism within the same tired dualistic subject-object metaphysics. Why not undercut both empiricism and platonism in one fell swoop, and see both numbers and physical things as pragmatic constructions, neither strictly ideal nor empirical, subjective nor objective, inner nor outer, but real nonetheless?

But isn't the follow up question: "why is it useful?" Not all of our inventions end up being useful. In virtue of what is mathematics so useful? Depending on our answer, the platonist might be able to appeal to Occam's razor too. A (relatively) straight-forward explanation for "why is math useful?" is "because mathematical objects are real and instantiated in the world."

This also helps to explain mathematics from a naturalist perspective vis-a-vis its causes. What caused us the create math? Being surrounded by mathematical objects. Why do we have the cognitive skills required to do math? Because math is all around the organism, making the ability to do mathematics adaptive. — Count Timothy von Icarus

One can always answer the question of why something is useful by attaching it to a sovereign ground. This works equally well for the true , the good and the numerical. But it may be more illuminating to ask the question of how something is useful, that is, what are the consequences of resorting to a sovereign ground rather than a pragmatic explanation based on subjectively and intersubjectively constructed norms. For instance, the consequence of asserting that mathematical objects are real things in the world is the risk of skepticism and arbitrariness. Why should there be unanimous agreement about the meaning of enumeration when there is disagreement out every other fact of nature?

By contrast, if we were to argue that the concept of number is a conceptual abstraction derived from the selective noticing of individual elements of a collective multiplicity, wherein one deliberately abstracts away everything about those individual elements other than the idea of ‘same thing different time’. ‘Same thing different time’ is not found anywhere in the world, it is an invention which, when applied to real objects, flattens differences in kind in order to accomplish certain useful goals. One consequence of understanding the usefulness of number as a pragmatic tool rather than as a sovereign fact of nature is to bypass the risk of skepticism and arbitrariness. Numeration arises out of the ground of practical human need for relating and keeping track of disparate objects. Its meaning is universal precisely because it is a pure, because empty, idealization and therefore not subject to the intersubjective tribunal that objective facts of nature must undergo.

↪Joshs :100: Thanks for the introduction to Shaun Gallagher — Wayfarer

It’s from a lecture he gave earlier this year at University of Tasmania. You might enjoy watching it:

What could be more nihilistic than to believe that life is suffering and the only way to escape the endless cycle of life and death is the complete extinguishment of everything that makes you you. — praxis

There are more nuanced ways of thinking about the alleviation of suffering via the realization of the no-self within the grasping ego. For instance, philosopher Shaun Gallagher, taking inspiration from the work of Francisco Varela, links the modern empirical discovery of the absence of a substantive ‘I' or ego with the Buddhist concept of non-self, and imports from Buddhism the ethical implications of the awareness of this non-self, which he formulates as the transcendence of a grasping selfishness in favor of a compassionate responsivity to the other. Gallagher(2024) summarizes Varela:

“Putting the self in question is a kind of deconstructive phase of Buddhist mindfulness practice, out of which comes something more positive, and here he quotes a Buddhist scholar who says when the reasoning mind no longer clings and grasps one awakens into the wisdom with which one was born and compassion arises without pretense....The good is what compassion means, the good is to eliminate suffering. For Varela and for Buddhist theories this is closely tied to the conception of or the elimination of the self as a source of suffering…

Gallagher sees in Varela's account a strong normative conception of the Good.

“One can conceive of this selflessness in terms of skilled effortful coping which associates with the Taoist idea of what is called not doing. When one is the action, no residue of self-consciousness remains to observe the action externally. In the Buddhist practice of self deconstruction, to forget oneself is to realize ones emptiness, to realize that one's every characteristic is conditioned and conditional. So it's this appeal to this notion of a selfless type of phenomenon that for Varela really constitutes the sort of core of the notion of goodness, since in fact by eliminating the self one eliminates suffering, and one acts compassionately.”

I'm keeping a rough approximation of his genealogy, for instance, and the master/slave distinction. I keep the notion of the overman because it's the fulcrum around which my criticism rests; empirically speaking Nietzsche can be interpreted in many ways, and the overman which overcomes himself is the overman that never exists (rather than comes about as the future state of post-humanity; or at least, not yet).

But I still get a great deal of use out of his ideas. I'm skeptical of the metaphysical project in general, and so it goes with Nietzsche. (and so the Will to Power)

And I see nothing sick about slave morality, or healthy about master morality. So while I accept the distinction I'm uncertain about Nietzsche's positive evaluation of master morality — Moliere

You say you have criticisms, and point out that Nietzsche can be interpreted in many ways. I’m sure you would agree that in order to be fair (and accurate) in your critique, you ned to be acquainted with the way he is read by poststructuralists like Klossowski, Focault, Deleuze, Heidegger and Derrida, who have produced some of the
most influential interpretations of him. In order to understand how they read such concepts as the overman, master/ slave morality and Will to Power, it is essential that you grasp their deconstruction of the concept of the subject, of identity, of dialectical opposition and of traditional metaphysics. How, for instance. can one critique identity politics from a Nietzschean point of view?
How can one put into question distinctions between the individual and the social, the self and the Other, as reflected in your Levinasian statement that ethics begins with others rather than the state of being or the choices of an individual?

Except that I don't think the genealogy of notions of the good justifies the good -- that this is still an "is", and not an "ought"; it only becomes an ought if we are passionate about following the normative structures of intelligibility. — Moliere

Who is this subjective ‘we’ that freely chooses in a Sartrean way to follow or not to follow the normative structures of intelligibility? Does a subject exist first and then choose to participate in normative epistemological or ethical systems? Or are subjects formed as an effect of social practices of subjectivation? Do we follow normative structures or do normative structures undergird, constrain and define the criteria of the ethical good and bad for us prior to our choosing as individual ‘subjects’? That is to say, do we choose the ethical norms that bind us or do we choose WITHIN the ethical norms that produce us?

Yes, Nietzsche can be read in many ways. The same is true of any great philosopher, and I would add that natural scientific paradigms are interpretable in as many different ways, but the abstractive nature of vocabularies in the physical sciences masks this diversity. But if you are arguing that there is no consistent substantive set of philosophical ideas that we can locate in his work, then I side with Deleuze, Foucault , Derrida, Heidegger and others who differ with you.
— Joshs

Why?

I see no reason to pick a side — Moliere

I would never claim there is a correct reading of Nietzsche or any other philosopher, so you should pick a side which reveals a philosophical interpretation of Nietzsche that is the most interesting to you, pushes Nietzsche to the limits of his thinking and offers the greatest potential for usefully guiding your understanding of the world. This is what I have done.

I'm not against a Deleuzian reading; but if asked how I understand the text then I'm going to point out the Nietzsche is purposefully kalaidescopic, and master morality remains neutral to any particular preference. — Moliere

Yes, that explains why you don’t seem to get much use from his ideas. I wouldn’t either with a reading like that.

If the world is absurd, incoherent, beyond knowledge then there's no point in arguing over what the world consists in and we can skip straight to the point: rather than making metaphysical theses which implicate a particular ethical frame we can just talk about the good, rather than being. — Moliere

If the world were incoherent and beyond knowledge, we wouldn’t be able to function in it, even on a perceptual level. The world we actually live in provides normative structures of intelligibility, recognizable patterns on the basis of which we can anticipate events, communicate and understand each other. All this without any way of grounding our pragmatic ways of knowing and getting along in a metaphysically certain basis of the ‘way things really are’.
Notions of the good emerge out of our ensconsement within actual contingent contexts of interaction within normatively patterned social practices. That is to say, ways of being. We could say with Heidegger that Being is the event of its myriad ways of being.

Nietzsche doesn't answer the titular question -- why ought one do that which is good?

Does master morality always lead to an eternal vigilance and preparation for self-transformation in the face of suffering?

I think, rather, that suffering is as valorized as the other forces which lead one out of nihilism. — Moliere

I think the question of why one ought to do that which is good is a tautology. The justification is embedded within the historically, contextually created system of practices which provide the particular intelligibility of a way of being, a form of life, a language game. Each discursive system of rationality already implies its own criteria of good and bad. Its ‘oughts’ are presupposed by the qualitative ‘is’ of its value system, which is what any system of rationality is.

I wouldn’t say that master morality leads to an eternal vigilance and preparation for self-transformation in the face of suffering, but that in some sense it is nothing but this vigilance.

Deleuze grapples with the issue of the relation between an implicit creative dimension of sense and an explicitly logical, extensive field of actuality by proposing to think the two aspects together in a transcendental-empirical synthesis.The transcendental dimension is represented by an anonymous, pre personal field of reciprocally interacting differences from which emerge singularities and intensities. These structures are actualized on the empirical dimension as wholes and parts, qualities and extensities. Deleuzian intensities are external to actualized extensity and quality as their generative cause and impetus of transformation. Intensities affirm the paradoxical, the heterogeneous, the singular, the incompossible, the Eternal Return of the different, the indeterminate, the non-sensical, the roll of the dice within sense, the object=x as difference in general, the virtual event of sense as intensity, the verb underlying the sleight of hand of the axiomatic , converging, referential functions of actualizing predication. Deleuze(1987) aligns his intensive-extensive duality with Bergson's distinction between duration and the empirical multiplicity of magnitude.

“Bergson presents duration as a type of multiplicity opposed to metric multiplicity or the multiplicity of magnitude. Duration is in no way indivisible, but is that which cannot be divided without changing in nature at each division.'On the other hand, in a multiplicity such as homogeneous extension, the division can be carried as far as one likes without changing anything in the constant object; or the magnitudes can vary with no other result than an increase or a decrease in the amount of space they striate. Bergson thus brought to light "two very different kinds of multiplicity," one qualitative and fusional, continuous, the other numerical and homogeneous, discrete. It will be noted that matter goes back and forth between the two; sometimes it is already enveloped in qualitative multiplicity, sometimes already developed in a metric "schema" that draws it outside of itself.”

In Deleuze’s distinction between the unseparated implicit multiplicity of the transcendental field and explicit logical patterns, the latter are generated within the former but are heterogeneous to it and outside of it. Logic and extension by degree are developments and explications (secondary degradations) of the implicit (Virtual). The illusion is confusing the implicit and the explicit , the intrinsic and the extrinsic. For Deleuze, the implicit intensities (Eternal Return) generate the logical , conceptual, theoretical, lawful principles for empirical domains, and then are held steady in the background, beyond the reach of the conceptual and logical patterns, which cancel them by freezing and isolating them.

“The transcendental principle does not govern any domain but gives the domain to be governed to a given empirical principle; it accounts for the subjection of a domain to a principle. The domain is created by difference of intensity, and given by this difference to an empirical principle according to which and in which the difference itself is cancelled. It is the transcendental principle which maintains itself in itself, beyond the reach of the empirical principle. Moreover, while the laws of nature govern the surface of the world, the eternal return ceaselessly rumbles in this other dimension of the transcendental or the volcanic spatium.” (Deleuze 1994)

The aphoristic approach makes it such that there is no true Nietzsche at all -- there are perspectives on Nietzsche, like Deleuze's, and there are other perspectives which read him more as a modernist. There isn't a true perspective so much as a perspectival truth. This applies to Nietzsche as well, such that there is no true reading of Nietzsche -- there was a Deleuzian reading of Nietzsche, and there was a fascist reading of Nietzsche, and there's the historical reading of Nietzsche, and there's the intentional reading of Nietzsche, and there's the leftist Nietzsche, the Christian Nietzsche, and the analytic Nietzsche, and the silly reading of Nietzsche which ought be included in the ever updating persona that is the new Nietzsche. — Moliere

Yes, Nietzsche can be read in many ways. The same is true of any great philosopher, and I would add that natural scientific paradigms are interpretable in as many different ways, but the abstractive nature of vocabularies in the physical sciences masks this diversity. But if you are arguing that there is no consistent substantive set of philosophical ideas that we can locate in his work, then I side with Deleuze, Foucault , Derrida, Heidegger and others who differ with you.

I have no qualms with defining slave morality by the ascetic ideal. I'm noting that people like the ascetic ideal. They want to be sick. They desire slavish morality — Moliere

What people like is freedom from domination by others, but also freedom from inner chaos. Seeing the world as incoherent is just as imprisoning as being repressed by external authority. So this freedom for intelligibility from the vantage of one’s own perspective requires a world that is made recognizable, and such recognizability is a product of discursive , languaged, conceptual interactions within a social milieu. This makes us free within the systems of discursive rationality that we participate in, until the not where we become the victim of someone else’s interpretation of ‘slavish morality’, sovereign law of nature or doctrine of ethics. We are not forced into a way of understanding the world in a top-down fashion by the ‘collective’. Rather, such systems of rationality flow from one person to the next in our practices, and each interaction changes the nature of the system is some small fashion.

Eventually, a segment of the community can begin to diverge from the larger group such that they see what was formerly acceptable as repressive and unethical. What Nietzsche taught writes like Foucault and Deleuze was that it is possible el to insert oneself within a system of rationality such that one can be open to catalyzing and accelerating the transition from identified repressive structures. It’s not a question of telling people they should be unhappy with their current system of rationality, but of showing them how they can better prepare themselves when it inevitably collapses. Master morality amounts to this eternal vigilance and preparation for self-transformation in the face of suffering.

Consciousness is a natural thing. Anything in the universe is natural. The problem is the belief that there cannot be any aspect of the universe that is not in the purview of our physical sciences. As Nagel says in Mind and Cosmos:
...intellectual humility requires that we resist the temptation to assume that tools of the kind we now have are in principle sufficient to understand the universe as a whole.
— Thomas Nagel
How have we concluded that we have so great a grasp of things that we can rule out any possibility that something exists outside of that understanding? — Patterner

I agree that consciousness is a natural process, but understanding this natural process can give us a new way to understand the concept of the natural that bypasses the limitations of traditional physicalism. For instance, recent scientific models of consciousness see it as a synthetic organizing process which is not strictly in the head , but consists of exchanges and reciprocal activities that move between the brain, the body and an environment , which is itself co-defined by the patterns of interaction between it and the organism. Understanding consciousness in this naturalistic way allows us to see how intersubjectively formed concepts developed in a social community on the basis of real discursive and material interactions in a human-built environment have led to theories about the nature of the world such as physicalism, the idea that there are such things as properties of the world independent of our conceptual interactions with that world, and we have direct, unmeditated access to such properties. Such a theory has been quite useful for technological progress, but it is a woefully inadequate theory when it comes to explaining the organization of living systems, consciousness and human cognition and affectivity.

There are competing approaches to naturalism, and the underlying assumptions guiding what we now call the physical sciences don’t remain static. I assume that within a generation or two physics, which has already in the past 125 years substantially altered its concepts of the physical, will come closer to where the biological and embodied cognitive sciences have arrived on this issue.

Whatever the true nature of what we call the physical is, my point is that there has never been any suggestion that consciousness has any of its characteristics. — Patterner

Sure there has. You just have to read phenomenology.

Many philosophers have argued that there seems to be a gap between the objective, naturalistic facts of the world and the subjective facts of conscious experience. The hard problem is the conceptual and metaphysical problem of how to bridge this apparent gap. There are many critical things that can be said about the hard problem, but what I wish to point out here is that it depends for its very formulation on the premise that the embodied mind as a natural entity exists ‘out there' independently of how we configure or constitute it as an object of knowledge through our reciprocal empathic understanding of one other as experiencing subjects. One way of formulating the hard problem is to ask: if we had a complete, canonical, objective, physicalist account of the natural world, including all the physical facts of the brain and the organism, would it conceptually or logically entail the subjective facts of consciousness? If this account would not entail these facts, then consciousness must be an additional, non-natural property of the world.

One problem with this whole way of setting up the issue, however, is that it presupposes we can make sense of the very notion of a single, canonical, physicalist description of the world, which is highly doubtful, and that in arriving (or at any rate approaching) such a description, we are attaining a viewpoint that does not in any way presuppose our own cognition and lived experience. In other words, the hard problem seems to depend for its very formulation on the philosophical position known as transcendental or metaphysical realism. From the phenomenological perspective explored here, however — but also from the perspective of pragmatism à la Charles Saunders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey, as well as its contemporary inheritors such as Hilary Putnam (1999) — this transcendental or metaphysical realist position is the paradigm of a nonsensical or incoherent metaphysical viewpoint, for (among other problems) it fails to acknowledge its own reflexive dependence on the intersubjectivity and reciprocal empathy of the human life-world. ( Evan Thompson)

Surely you agree that Nietzsche prefers the healthy and noble master morality, yes? — Moliere

Again, how are you understanding health and nobility for Nietzsche? It is not about a ‘constant striving’. Who is doing the striving? A self? Doesn’t striving imply a pre-existing purpose or aim on the basis of which to strive? The creative becoming Nietzsche valorizes isnt something we have to decide to put into effect, like some sort of plan, as if a self sits there in the background judging the success of their striving. The point is that the self which would see itself as putting into effect such a plan doesn’t exist in the next moment. It is already a different self. That is what self-overcoming means, not a substantive subject accumulating points, enjoying witnessing the progress in the direction of its increase in health, nobility and mastery. The very notion of health and nobility is the continual forgetting and displacing of the previous self. The ubermensch is beyond good and evil because it constantly erases and displaces its history, and with it previous standards and principles of morality.

It is not as if those who cling to traditional moralities are not also functioning as a continual becoming. The difference between them and the ubermensch is a question of awareness, not that “humanity stays about neutral ethically speaking -- they want similar things now as they did back then”. The will to nothingness, the ascetic ideal and slave morality which undergird staying neutral ethically and wanting similar things over time are themselves forms of the will to power. This means that we are displacing ourselves even as we desire to remain the same. We only succeed in remaining the same differently, in spite of our best efforts. But this doesnt keep us from trying to enforce repressive modes of conformity on others, based on our Platonic faith in constancy, eternity and fixity.

But Nietzsche's solution to this problem strikes me as pretty unrealistic. For one it only applies to ubermensch -- people who act out of a sense of nobility for what is higher in spite of suffering, or even seek out suffering to improve themselves. The slaves can't even strive to this morality; their lesser morality is written by the masters — Moliere

Again, we need to redefine the way you’re using terms like master and slave, good and bad, higher and lower, improvement and lack of improvement.

Slave morality has to be understood in relation to reactive values and the ascetic ideal. Nietzsche believed that the world, and the psyche, is composed of continually changing valuative differences. This is expressed by his notion of the eternal return of the same, which is the endless return of the same absolutely different . This means that concepts like purpose, goal, standard, identity and equality are fabrications which conceals the underlying changes in qualitative value. Reactive values assume an equal opposition that is ruled by an overarching concept or principle which remains the same. For instance, male vs female is ruled by the overarching concept of gender, good vs evil is ruled by the overarching concept of ethics. For Nietzsche slave morality, weakness, the ascetic ideal, and sickness in general have to do with believing in concepts, principles and truths which remain the same and rule over life. The notion of science as providing deeper truths that transcend mere appearance is an ascetic ideal, and as such
falsifies the actual creative becoming of life. The same is true of moral principles.

The ubermensch is not a higher man, it is a critique and overcoming of humanism. Not the elevation of man after the death of God , but the death of man. Not self-improvement but self-overcoming. As Foucault put it

“As the archaeology of our thought easily shows, man is an invention of recent date. And one perhaps nearing its end.

The death of man implies the death of the subject and the ego. Nietzsche writes:

The 'I' (which is not the same thing as the unitary government of our being!) is, after all, only a conceptual synthesis - thus there is no acting from 'egoism’… The concept of the 'individual' is false. In isolation, these beings do not exist: the centre of gravity is something changeable; the continual generation of cells, etc., produces a continual change in the number of these beings… “…mixing in the concept of number, the concept of subject, the concept of motion: we still have our eyes, our psychology in the world. If we eliminate these ingredients, what remains are not things but dynamic quanta in a relationship of tension with all other dynamic quanta, whose essence consists in their relation to all other quanta, in their 'effects' on these - the will to power not a being, not a becoming, but a pathos-is the most elementary fact, and becoming, effecting, is only a result of this.

(Remember, the will to power does not mean "wanting to dominate" or "wanting power")

I can stumble upon something I've never seen before, that doesn't resemble anything I've seen before, and whose purpose or function I can't guess. But I can still measure its dimensions and weigh it — Patterner

You can only measure dimensions and weight of something which is presumed to remain qualitatively the same over the course of the quantitative measuring and weighing. Any calculation of differences in degree presupposes no difference in kind during the process. Otherwise one is dealing with a new thing and has to start over again. The world doesn’t consist of objects with attributes and properties which remain qualitatively the same from one moment to the next. We invented the concept of object as a qualitatively self-same thing so that we could then proceed to perform calculative measurements. Obviously, this works out well for us, but it doesn’t mean that ‘physical’ objects exist out there in the world rather than in the abstractions that we perform on the continually changing data we actually experience in our interactions with the world.

And lastly I think Nietzsche valorizes heightened states or excellent persons far too much. While master/slave morality is descriptive I definitely get a sense throughout his writing that he prefers master morality, whereas I'd say I prefer slave morality, and the wisdom of the herd. — Moliere

Deleuze would say you’re succumbing to a common misreading here.

We must again avoid misconceptions about the Nietzschean terms "strong" and "weak," "master" and "slave": it is clear that the slave doesn't stop being a slave when he gets power, nor do the weak cease to be weak. Even when they win, reactive forces are still reactive. In everything, according to Nietzsche, what is at stake is a qualitative typology: a question of baseness and nobility. Our masters are slaves that have triumphed in a universal becoming-slave: European man, domesticated man, the buffoon. Nietzsche describes modern states as ant colonies, where the leaders and the powerful win through their baseness, through the contagion of this baseness and this buffoonery.

Whatever the complexity of Nietzsche's work, the reader can easily guess in which category (that is, in which type ) he would have placed the race of “masters" conceived by the Nazis. When nihilism triumphs, then and only then does the will to power stop meaning "to create" and start to signify instead "to want power," "to want to dominate" (thus to attribute to oneself or have others attribute to one established values: money, honors, power, and so on). Yet that kind of will to power is precisely that of the slave; it is the way in which the slave or the impotent conceives of power, the idea he has of it and that he applies when he triumphs.

Bernardo Kastrup points out that materialism - that the basic constituents of reality are material in nature - and idealism - that reality is experiential in nature - are incommensurable types of explanations… Buddhist philosophy takes a view which is neither idealistic nor materialistic; Buddhists do not believe that the Universe is composed of only matter. They believe that there is something else other than matter. — Wayfarer

Kant correctly recognized that taking a strictly materialist stance depends on an idealism, since the very notion of a mind-independent object covertly smuggles in all the subjective apparatus needed to have an object appear before a subject. So realism and idealism are not opposites but versions of the same subject -based thinking. With regard to a Buddhist claim that there is something ‘else’ besides matter, I can’t see this as anything other than a reformulation of a dualist idealism.

Some people explain the Universe as a universe based on matter. But there also exists something which we call value or meaning. A Universe consisting only of matter leaves no room for value or meaning in civilizations and cultures. Matter alone has no value.

if you want to get beyond the realism-idealism, fact-value split, you have to be able to see value WITHIN matter , not separate from it and alongside it. Chalmers tries to pull the former trick by starting from spirit and matter as separate entities and then mixing them together like ingredients of a pie (panpsychism). To arrive at a thinking which transcends the traditional ideal-realism binary, you have to turn to phenomenological and poststructuralist perspectives.